Erik Truffaz

“Mesmerizing, a real surprise and a testimony to how resourceful the acoustic improviser Truffaz remains”
The Guardian

Artist information

Erik Truffaz is one of the greatest contemporary jazz trumpeters and is often compared to the great Miles Davis.

Truffaz has played countless concerts all over the world for example at Ronnie Scott's London, Moods Zurich, Porgy&Bess Vienna, Festsaal Kreuzberg Berlin, the Jarasum Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival and several other countries such as the USA, Argentina, India, Singapore etc.

The musical constant in Truffaz' work surely is The Erik Truffaz Quartet. It is first and foremost a collective entity with its own sound and groupdynamic. In 1997, the band, then featuring Marcello Giuliani on bass, Marc Erbetta, drums, and Patrick Muller, keyboards, released its debut “Out of a dream” on Blue Note. On the follow-ups, “The dawn” and “Bending new corner”, rapper Nya added a poetic, urban touch; the clip “Yuri’s choice” went a long way to developing the music’s popularity. The group drew inspiration from gigs at London’s Blue Note Club, a temple of drum & bass, and did its composing on tour during sound checks, from fragments of improvisation.

The music springs into life naturally, effortlessly, like painting in the mirror of inspiration. On theback of these two albums the group acquired an international dimension, touring regularly, developing a trademark feelgood sound.

The band made its first big change of direction in 2003 with the organic, bubbling rock-inspired “The walk of the giant turtle”. When sound engineers Corboz and Giuliani added distortion to his trumpet sound, Truffaz was initially infuriated, but then went on to espouse and develop the concept.

With the “Arkhangelsk” album, the band came of age, in the company of Ed Harcourt and Christophe, two singers with two special voices and great tracks.

In June 2010 Benoît Corboz, the band’s studio sound engineer since “The Dawn” took over from Patrick Müller on keyboards. The new line-up wasted no time in going into the studio. The result was a new sound, kneaded energetically like a dough, then left to rest and ferment before being worked up into the album "In Between", a celebration of slow tempos, deliberate silence, elastic space and intimacy. Marcello Giuliani reverted to upright bass and recorded one track on banjo.